Good evening. My name's Walter. I'm from the Middle East Centre.
You haven't seen me here previously this term because I went to the Vatican when I came out of sabbatical for.
And it's my pleasure to introduce tonight's speaker, Ibrahim Al Rasheed.
It's not the first time I've introduced him. He comes here fairly frequently and he was our own student.
He graduated in 2004 in the history department and is now an associate professor of history at California State University, San Marcos.
He's a historian of 20th century Iraq. His dissertation was on the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War.
As you have seen from the centre Web site,
Ibrahim's work was plagiarised by the British government when he was trying to fabricate a rationale for joining the U.S.
Invasion of Iraq in 2003. This was informally known, or maybe it's official now known as the dodgy dossier case.
Ibrahim is the co-author of a number of works, including Iraq's Armed Forces An Analytical History,
published in 2008, The Modern History of Iraq in 2017,
and a Concise History of the Modern,
released in 2018 by Routledge and is currently researching the effects of climate change on Iraq and before the pandemic.
He had developed an interest in pandemics,
and so so he went through an intense period of teaching 15 different variations of classes on pandemics during pandemic.
But he just told me that now the pandemic is over and people started investing interests in that topic.
But this is still a fascinating topic. Well, this lecture, the title of tonight's lecture is The Transformation of Iraq since the 2003 Invasion.
From the dodgy dossier to human security, gender and the nation's future in the face of climate change.
As usual, Ibrahim will speak for 4550 minutes, and then we'll have time for questions afterwards.
So please join me in giving a warm welcome to Ibrahim Rashid.
Very good. First of all, I wanted to thank you. I realise this is the last day of term.
Fortunately, the weather improved, so I'm grateful for that.
As Walter introduced me. Yes, I did.
My people here. I graduated in 2004.
At that time I was writing a thesis on the 1991 Gulf War.
When it was finished, it was perhaps the most recent thesis in the modern history department at Oxford
at the time of Tell Me your particular episode of one chapter of that thesis.
But after the publication of the thesis, I also had the pleasure of coming back here.
In 2004, Walter introduced me for another subject that I was researching, and that was the beginning of the use of beheadings as a tool of terrorism.
By then, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi at that time,
somebody affiliated with the organisation known as al Qaeda in Iraq that would eventually evolve into ISIS.
So there is a thread that unites what seems disparate subjects.
And first of all, I have tried to at the end of this seminar series is, first of all, how the history of Iraq for the last ten years has been written.
What were the major episodes? What were the major milestones?
This is what I wanted to go over, and when I first pitched the subject back in September, the entire lecture series came out of that.
Looking at Iraq over the last 20 years, I asked to be the final speaker because I not only want to refer to some of the previous speakers,
but reflect on the last 20 years and then by bringing in climate change, also look at the most salient subject going into the next 20 years.
So what I'm going to first of all,
basically look at is the one overarching theme is the ramification of the consequences of the collapse
of the security sector in 2003 with the argument that is the effects are still being felt today,
particularly the record of governance since 2003 intersects with instability and will only be exacerbated in the future with climate change.
So what I'm going to do is then look at the nexus with the collapse of the security sector and climate change.
What does that bode in terms of Iraq's future? It's more or less this and first, some of those are quite young.
What am I going to try to introduce you to for you might be the children during
the Iraq war was a time when the survival of the Iraqi state was in doubt.
So what I want to conclude with is, first of all, how has Iraq survive?
How has the state evolved despite the odds? So as I said, I'll be looking at more or less over the last 20 years,
four things the collapse of the security sector and the consequent rise of violent non-state actors in Iraq.
Then kind of look at going from the domestic to a brief overview of the regional context as we are in the present from the last 20 years.
How is the region more or less been affected by the Iraq war?
And then look, go back to Iraq, reflect on the loss of Iraq's ethno sectarian heterogeneity,
and then finally look at the future of Iraq and climate change.
So in other words, the thesis I suppose I wrote really fell into history, but it had ramifications in the literature of national security.
When I was doing my thesis in Oxford, I was also working with an NGO called Child Soldiers International,
and that was more or less working in the field of human security.
I was attending a lecture recently on women in the Gulf and a colleague of mine,
somebody I've worked for for a long time, they ran the regime who opened the opened the Iraq Foundation in the US.
During that lecture, she lamented the kind of, let's say,
the inability of the field of national security to talk to other fields in which we use the word security.
We use terms such as energy security. And usually energy security and national security are kind of sort of on a continuum.
But her regret was that the field of human security that looks at the kind of the most vulnerable populations in conflict,
right, is usually their scholars are working in their own field.
And then, you know, food security is a term we use water security, finally, climate security.
I'm going to try to kind of create a common link through all these fields by particularly looking at the collapse of the security sector.
So first, let's take you back in time. It's February 2003.
And why has the famed Brazilian author, Paulo Coelho, is writing a thank you letter to Bush, where he refers to not only cold.
Powell, but making it necessary for Tony Blair to go to the British parliament with a
fabricated dossier written by a student That's me ten years ago and present.
This is damning evidence collected by the British Secret Service.
So when Colin Powell had past, this was perhaps his darkest blemish on his diplomatic and military career.
That presentation in February 2003, where he was approaching the UN General Assembly.
But really it was this kind of a venue to advocate for a U.N. Security Council resolution to further justify military action against Iraq.
Let's go back in 2003 and look at the following video to remind us of what happened that.
Just to remind you, it's February 2008, heralded by the government's carefully coordinated propaganda offensive,
took an embarrassing hit tonight after Downing Street was accused of plagiarism.
The target is the intelligence dossier released on Monday,
heralded by none other than US Secretary of State Colin Powell at the United Nations yesterday.
Channel four News has learned the bulk of this 19 page document was copied from three different articles,
one written by a graduate student and Specialist Judith Rush as the details.
I was writing on Monday, the day before the U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell,
addressed the UN and Downing Street published its latest paper on Iraq.
It gives the impression of being an up to the minute intelligence based analysis.
Mr. Powell was fulsome in his praise.
I would call my colleagues attention to the fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed yesterday, which describes an exquisite,
detailed Iraqi deception activities published on the Number ten website and called Iraq its infrastructure, concealment, Deception and intimidation.
It outlines the structure of surveillance intelligence organisations. It makes familiar, really, to a Cambridge academic.
Is that new school for the context. So I searched around the other articles that I have read on higher ups and organisations.
Country. I realise that large sections of the Turkish government stuffs the Russian copy copied from here.
An article last September, a small journal of the Middle East Review of International Affairs.
Its author, Ibrahim Al Rasheed, a postgraduate Students from Monterey of California.
The document the Russian government does here is 19 pages of most of 2660, according to RFQ.
From the left or right. Even if the logical address and touch of this, for example, six paragraphs long on Saddam's special security organisation,
the exact same words in the California student's paper of military intelligence of Iraqi writes The head of
military intelligence generally did not have to be a relative of Saddam's immediate family or a Tikriti.
Saddam appointed Soviet Abdul-Aziz al-Douri as head.
Notice the comma after appointed Downing Street paraphrases the first sentence,
but the second is cut and pasted, complete with the same grammatical error.
Academic plagiarism. Seriously Intellectual theft.
Downing Street didn't ask for permission to reproduce the work, which is not current,
but actually an historical analysis of the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait before the last Gulf War.
He's writing his Ph.D. thesis on the operation of Iraqi forces in the way, and he's a primary source of information.
These documents captured from the Iraqi government in 1991.
The information before that he's using is 12 years old, and he acknowledges this in his article.
The British government may that information and does not know which services present his current information about Iraq's current security services.
When reading the information, since using some 12 year old Downing Street copy from two other articles for the magazine,
Jane's Intelligence Review editor is happy to be quoted less happy in a selective way.
Some parts were edited. What you want me to look at is exactly how it's being compiled and collated, and the questions that you were asking about.
Has certain things been selected for spin?
There's a right question done in several places at Downing Street, and it's the originals to make more sinister reading.
Number ten says that the intelligence agency is spying on foreign embassies in Iran.
The original read monitoring of foreign embassies in Iraq and the provocative role of
supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes is weaker than the originals,
aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes. And the original phrase describing a group made up of all in the country bumpkins is in
content version just bullies editing to make Saddam's apparatus look more terrifying,
raising questions about the way number ten is spinning the justification for war.
Julian Rush Well, I called Downing Street for reaction. The minister was available and you're kidding me.
Actually, the Tory opposition didn't want to talk about Later, Downing Street offered this statement.
Our report was put together by a range of government officials. But what makes this clear?
The contents were drawn from a number of sources, including intelligence material.
First paragraph erm part out of the report does not identify or credit any sources, nor does it claim exclusivity on its contents.
We consider the text as published accurate. The Downing Street spokesman will not be drawn on whether this included typos and spelling mistakes.
Okay, so what are you looking at?
And people always ask me, what was your immediate reaction to be plagiarised by the British government?
It wasn't that it highlighted my poor use of commas. My most immediate reaction when it kind of infuriated me was with the copy of my chart,
this very complicated chart that I compiled that more or less put together the complicated,
convoluted and confusing nature of the security sector under Saddam Hussein.
So just for reference,
the security sector refers to those forces beyond the conventional military that are usually charged with maintaining domestic security.
In some states, they might be paramilitary forces. Now, the important is not just the confusion,
but the numbers that I highlighted in terms of how many individuals were mobilised and each one of these organisations collectively,
it was about a lower estimate, about 80,000 figures in the Iraqi security sector, maybe as high as 100,000.
Okay. Why are those numbers important?
Because, number one, let's look at the reference to the 10 to 15000 country bumpkins in the news report on those quote unquote,
country bumpkins were referred to in a military unit known as the Fedayeen Saddam controlled by Saddam Hussein.
When that news report came out, there was kind of a hidden message in my research book.
And it's this, what these 100,000 individuals, those country bumpkins,
says a lot of work in those country bumpkins primarily come from they came from Tikrit.
You see these this network projected fear on Iraqi society.
It was also a job provider for the various segments of Iraqi society that were the key to regime security.
So this became a question that I was the main point of my article was this What happens if the security sector is demobilised?
If it's managed properly, it might avoid this scenario.
And this was my fear. If this is a network is demobilised overnight.
What does that mean? You have 100,000 men proficient in the use of arms with no future and stake in the new Iraqi government.
So when I say how is this related to human security,
I'm not talking about in terms of human security in regards to these individuals who committed some horrific crimes and human security needs.
What threat does the demobilised security sector mean for the Iraqi population?
And my argument is the Iraqi population endured that threat for the last 20 years, more or less.
You see, when this document with plagiarise in February 2003, I let's look at February 2023, the date this was plagiarised.
And I saw a lot of symbolism what happened within the span of a week.
Number one, a prominent Iraqi environmentalist, Jassim al-Asad.
He was kidnapped on a major road on the way to about that.
The same week, a prominent Iraqi YouTuber named Tebow Laleh, who had just come back to visit Iraq,
was kidnapped by her father and killed in an honour killing.
So in other words, the symbolism of the timing is this 20 years later, this back to back events happening in the same week,
20 years after the plagiarism forced me to ponder a question if security sector reform had been managed properly.
And this is one of the great counterfactuals with events like these, just these two that I picked still be occurring 20 years from now.
Because you see the answer to my fears. Okay, we're realised on May 23rd in a single order.
And I think this was the most consequential decision made in Iraq's past and the ramifications which are still being felt 20 years later.
What happened after I was plagiarised, I did have to go to the British Parliament, to the Parliament and testify.
And one of the many inquiries that lasted for almost close to a decade in terms of understanding the case to go to war against Iraq.
My greatest regret was during those testimonies was to say the wrong lesson was taken from the plagiarism.
It wasn't copying the information, but asking this question What would the ramifications be of security sector reform that wasn't managed properly?
What happened was not only the complete disbandment of a lot of organisations, you saw my chart, that's what I underline.
Okay. What was unpardonable was the complete demobilisation of the Iraqi military.
Remember, my concern was what would happen with 100,000 individuals being demobilised and what threat would they pose to Iraqi society.
Remember, the Iraqi army, more or less its size at one time was about 1 million men under arms.
So that, I think becomes one of the most important issues is not only the collapse of the security sector,
but the Iraqi military itself being demobilised, where the U.S. military then found itself in a role where it had to serve the
function of the Iraqi military without the sufficient numbers to do that.
And so what am I going to be presenting then, from this point on onwards, are the consequences of this decision.
This is my argument. This was one of the most consequential decisions made in Iraqi history in the last 20 years,
because not only did you deprive Iraq of some kind of mechanism or the institutions to maintain security,
but this demobilisation also basically gave the fuel in terms of the training, the grievances for the Iraqi insurgency.
This is relevant now. Let's look and choose consequences of this decision.
You see all of these agencies projected fear into Iraqi society.
But for the most part, if you look at this network, even though it was complicated, it was collectively referred to as the macabre.
And like I said, if these individuals were not somehow rehabilitated or reintegrated, some were criminals and should be tried.
So to sum up now, one of the first speakers you had was Ali Allawi, who began his lecture series about without a stake.
So if you want to go back in 2003, what were Ali Allawi and who was also he was a fellow, I think, for me.
So I was working with him in 2003. What was our biggest concern?
So I was looking at this from the security element.
Ali Allawi was wondering what kind of process would Iraq have that would be somewhat akin to the Truth and Reconciliation committee in South Africa?
This was his big concern.
Now, of course, he was cognisant of the difficulties of applying a South African model to a society like Iraq, where, you know,
the South African model had these televised confessions, if you will, and then forgiveness from the perpetrators televised.
And this life session, he knew that would be difficult.
But still, he argued that there were lessons that should have been applied to this particular case.
This was a particular, of course, concern that we have now.
At the end of the day, what happened? It's quite interesting.
2003, this is what you have, one of the first collapses of the mass mobilisation armies in Middle Eastern history.
Like I said, it's almost kind of foreshadowing different circumstances.
But 2003, one of the largest Arab armies in the Middle East now no longer exists.
It almost foreshadows or kind of the precursor to the collapse of the Syrian military.
That was ranking number two, collapse of the Libyan army.
I mean, leaving if we're talking about kind of Arab militaries right now,
if you talk about one of the largest but still relatively intact, it's the Egyptian military.
So on one level, 2003 represented the end of the mass mobilisation army.
Again, we still have to acknowledge this was a military that not only engaged in two wars with the U.S.,
it was also a military force that used its arsenal and weapons,
not the regular military, but primarily the Republican Guard against Iraq's population during the uprising in 1991.
And again, I see a lot of a kind of foreshadowing of how the Syrian military, its equivalent of the Republican Guards,
would do that against its own civilian population or the elite praetorian units of Gadhafi's military.
So kind of the history of security sectors, what was happening in Iraq, even though it was reduced by the American invasion and its collapse.
But there were trends that would be forced out of in the Middle East in the future.
But nonetheless, so that fateful decision and sacrificed thousands of Iraqi men in the security services,
as well as the army proficient in the use of arms to foment an insurgency or augment the ranks of
jihadist extremist networks that would later go on to foment in the Iraqi civil war from 2006 to 2008.
So if we really deal with that episode and then take us up to the present.
Now, Iraq's security sector, as I documented in my work, was brutal under Saddam Hussein.
But violence such as kidnapping or gender based violence was primarily inflicted by the state.
In other words, if you were kidnapped, it was most likely the Mukhabarat.
Even gender based violence was committed by these forces.
The Fedayeen Saddam once had a notorious campaign of going through the streets of Baghdad
and beheading alleged prostitutes and leaving their decapitated heads on the door.
That was gender based violence right after.
So, in other words, but the site was this the state was the site of violence primarily in Iraqi society.
After 2003, Iraqis endured violence from a myriad of sources, not only from the foreign occupying sources.
So we have to remember that occupying U.S. military forces was a source of violence to Iraqi society,
whether it was a poor family going through a stop sign or incidents of American
soldiers entering an Iraqi home and raping a young girl and killing the entire family.
So it's the foreign occupying sources who become a source of violence. But those forces would leave.
But that leaves us with the collapse of the Iraqi security sector, Iraqi criminal gangs, militias,
tribes and even one's own family members could get away with crimes such as honour killings without facing any repercussions.
Something unheard of that somebody committed an honour killing without getting punished or coming under the jail,
you know, being tried by the Mukhabarat institutions under Saddam.
All of which emerge as a result of the invasion to boot the post-Saddam security sector.
Both Kurdish and Arab security forces, are not as effective as their predecessors, despite U.S. training.
Yet they also project violence into Iraqi society, targeting civil society activists and protesters.
Okay, so that's my overview of the ramifications of the collapse of the security sector.
Now, we'll look at just some digital primary sources around the time of the emergence of this particular figure that it seemed like the new Iraq is,
of course, the new security forces and the U.S. military did simply could not catch Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian.
And if you see these are actually Iraqi images of basically wondering how could
the most advanced U.S. military not capture this person who from 2004 to 2006,
he more or less established a network in Iraq that would be the precursor that would eventually evolve into the Islamic State of Iraq,
an affiliate about how you end up and eventually evolve into ISIS itself.
Zarqawi was eventually killed in 2006 in about by an American airstrike,
but his final legacy would be unleashing a civil war in Iraq as the result of the destruction of the shrine in Samarra.
Okay. And this episode from 2006 to 2008, that's civil war.
It's significant.
And I'll tell you also, I know Iraqis who might have not, let's say, personally been affected by the 2003 war, never mind the 1991 war.
In other words, they left. None of their relatives were killed. I know Iraqis who've endured the sanctions.
What I found quite fascinating was that almost every Iraqi I knew that was remaining in Iraq
after 2003 somehow was affected by that sectarian civil war that almost every Iraqi family,
whether it's Arabs in New York City, oppressed and so on and so forth, lost somebody in this conflict,
an intense round of bloodletting for two years, including right now as a result of this action.
So that's the sectarian civil war.
Now, I this lecture is also kind of a collection of the primary sources I've been
collecting over the last 20 years are pictures I've taken during my journey.
This was a picture I took in 2001 with June 2004.
And I want you to focus on this figure here, Moqtada Sadr.
And just kind of notice almost, he's surrounded by a trinity, by these images of various Shia imams.
Here we have them as well as Moqtada Sadr. The background is not Iraq, if I'm not mistaken.
This is Devil's Arch, which I think is in Utah.
I don't think that I think I'm going to take a vacation to the U.S. But what is this bigger significance?
So let's look at the evolution. Who was this figure in 2003 and 2004?
Number one, what did he represent? First of all, this survivor of a prominent cleric, Mohammed Saadat, etc., who was killed.
Like I said, if Iraqis are killed, it's primarily by the Mahabharat.
His father was killed by the Mukhabarat. He's the last remaining member of the family.
But he also represented a Shia network that remained in Iraq,
unlike a good number of various clerics who were exiled in 2003 2004, that U.S. forces tried to arrest them.
From that point on was what begins is I talked about an insurgency with elements related to Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
The Sadrists were another element of the insurgency that U.S. forces weren't able to defeat or dismantle.
Now, to bring these two events together, here I am in Samarra in 2010.
The civil war had begun to abate. But a lot of the sectarian killing, at least from the Shia side,
we know who was doing it from the primarily Arab Sunni side or the Arab tribal side or factions within the Sadrists,
that even Sadr himself lost control of a good number of the original Shia militias.
Did it emerge after the invasion of ISIS?
There are more or less breakaway groups that were encouraged to breakaway by Iran,
basically with the Sadrists militia, with a single faction that broke away from Sadr, again at the behest of Iran.
And I think Iran in this, they have at that moment have a vision that that would be akin to Iran's Hezbollah in Iraq.
And in fact, they took the name of Iraq's Hezbollah.
But then what happened was probably it was that faction because centre was always even though he was,
you know, a Shia cleric, he always had this message back,
even in 2004 that Iraq, the Arab Sunnis and Shia should find a modus vivendi,
that they should unite and cooperate in expelling the American occupation.
That action not only probably was responsible for a lot of the sectarian killing, but then further splits occurred within that organisation.
So I made a mistake. The first breakaway was a group called Assad Army cut from that organisation.
Another group called Kataib Hezbollah broke away from Kataib Hezbollah.
Another organisation broke away. That unified, cohesive Hezbollah never emerged in Iran.
Notwithstanding how many times I've heard that Iran has put the Hezbollah model in Iraq, though that description doesn't hold much water.
But let's never look at the consequences.
Like I said, what has been lost is a kind of heterogeneity in Iraq.
This is one of the examples, one of the legacies of the Iraqi civil war and.
It was the that the city that was mixed is now more or less where you can have members of any community living less than a single street.
What we see this is back in 2010 when I visited Iraq, where you had almost something akin to know,
you know, homogenous, monolithic, ethno sectarian neighbourhoods.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. This is a wonderful underground interface called a web of terror,
where if you ever want to go and look at kind of every single terrorist attack committed since World War Two, it's more or less mapped here.
What is the legacy of this organisation? That it was kind of a branch of al Qaeda.
Again, one of the laments was almost genocide of Iraq's Yazidi population.
And I just to show you kind of just images of the kind of Iraq's mosaic that was suffered as a result of ISIS.
Chaldean churches, for example, here, a mosaic of Saint George slaying the dragon being defaced by ISIS,
which in my opinion was the dragon getting to Iraq.
So with all of these events, then this question was raised who said this, The very existence of Iraq as a distinct sovereign entity.
Had become uncertain.
And for those of you who kind of don't remember, there were certain junctures in Iraq's history where sentiments like this were expressed.
Now, who said this is actually the editor of Iraq's first anthology of science fiction stories?
You say, why was the editor saying this is and if you'll notice the name here, I'm writing on veracity.
I contributed to the science fiction, even though as a historian, why didn't I write a science fiction story?
Because more or less, every single one of these writers,
we couldn't help but to write our projection of Iraq in 100 years being influenced by the rise of ISIS
because of the rise of ISIS again raised that question How long would this terrorist statelet endure,
and did it end its invasion more or less result in a de facto partition of Iraq?
Where would the Kurdish parts of Iraq be on their way to independence anyway had the Iraqi state failed?
So now let's go to this element. Iraq plus 100 is a book that was written where we projected Iraq 100 years later.
This lecture is called Iraq plus 20. What were you looking at over the last 20 years?
What happened? So, again, let us look at not only in other words, what did this map represent?
It's a reflection of the time. This is what I was trying to collect.
Okay. We're basically somebody said his name was Roth.
Peter is now a retired American lieutenant colonel.
Apart from that pundit on Fox News.
So if we talk about remember, this is the time when President Bush was President, Fox News was more or less the cheerleader of the Iraq war.
Okay. We're basically he was saying not only let's let Iraq collapse, but let's bring down the collapse of the entire Middle East state system.
Now, this was his most extreme manifestation of this kind of hubris.
But remember, there were two terms.
Look at this one. In 2008 team, there were ideas that there were such entities that we could call an Iraqi Kurdistan, a Shia state.
Okay. Now you might say, okay, these are more or less pundits extrapolating scenarios or this is you know,
it's a science fiction editor who's wondering what the Iraqi state pursuit is.
But then again, who wrote this article?
And really it reflected and this is other I'm trying to give you, is kind of the zeitgeist of the time of the Iraqi insurgency.
Unity through autonomy in Iraq was more or less a plan to make Iraq like Bosnia.
Okay, you might say. So what is the New York Times editorial written by Joseph Biden?
Okay. Back in 2006. You know, it's very interesting because look what he says here.
It is increasingly clear that Bush does not have a strategy for victory in Iraq.
Rather, he hopes to prevent defeat and pass the problem along to his successor,
which more or less would be President Obama and Biden as vice president.
So let's look at this particular case and.
Back in 2006, Biden was saying Europe should become like Bosnia.
Now, if you're anyone familiar with the kind of the state of Bosnia as of 2023, it itself is a dysfunctional political ad hoc.
But really, back then, the way if you have to remember that time was the fighting in Iraq was seen very much akin to the Bosnian civil war.
So really what this vision was was for both so-called soft partition.
Now let's reflect. It's quite interesting that once it went to the his, you know, the defeat and passive problem, a lot to a successor.
Let's look at what were some expectations on the eve of 2003 and what become the reality.
By almost ten years into the Iraq war, the U.S. withdrew.
And to everyone's surprise, did not get a military base, as was expected, not even in the Kurdistan Regional government.
And not only that, a status of Forces agreement could not even be agreed upon.
For the most part, it was a complete withdrawal, despite the expectations that even a residual force in Iraq would stay as of 2011.
Simply that status of forces agreements could not be agreed upon.
So this was not achieved. Second, despite the rhetoric of this war being a war for oil, again, another surprise emerged.
Who did benefit? Who were the victors in Iraq's oil sector?
Well, if you look at the groups that I highlighted, they weren't members of the coalition of the willing.
It's the China National Oil company, Petronas of Malaysia and Total, the China National Petroleum there.
And even a very at this time, it's hard to fathom that ExxonMobil could work with the Russian company Lukoil to extract Iraqi gas.
What happened to everyone's surprise? Despite all the problems of, you know, that we that this was a war for oil,
the Iraqi government did launch a very transparent Iraqi oil bidding process at that time under Iraqi foreign oil Minister Hussein Shahristani.
Where was it? Oil contracts were not awarded to a particular oil company based on its origin.
They have the bid had to be submitted anonymously. And that's when you got this outcome where you see very few American companies.
Why not? I mean, if you look at that coalition of the willing, it's really only that the Italian energy giant that got access to the field and again,
because it submitted a very just reasonable proposal. Repsol, the Spanish government's energy oil network,
which was part of the so-called coalition of the willing, did not get it, let's say, rewarded a contract.
So I kind of I want to use this map now to kind of reflect on the region as we conclude.
Remember back in 2003, the U.S. at that time was present in Afghanistan.
The Taliban was almost defeated. The U.S. was in Iraq.
And I remember the sentiment there particularly was that Syria and Iran would be next.
With that momentum. It might be hard to imagine, but there was genuine calls in saying now that Iraq to succeed, that Iran is going to fall.
Syria gone too far.
In 2003, yes, there's a lot that Ayatollah Khomeini Khomeini was willing to negotiate with the US at that point over its nuclear program,
over its support of proxy militias in the Middle East, over its ballistic missile program back in 2003.
That offer was rebuffed back in 2003. Now, what is the irony?
What has been the final obstacle of re-entering of the US re-entering the Iran deal?
The US is saying offer us these things that it was more than willing to do back in 2003 years,
that now if we look at this, what was the other ramification of the 2003 Iraq war?
Iraq used to be known as the eastern flank of the middle of the Arab world As of 2003, with the demobilisation of the Iraqi military,
The eastern flank collapsed Back in early 2006, The king of Jordan talked about a Shia arc going from Iran reaching the Mediterranean.
It was not an inevitability, but it happened probably, I don't think, by design, but by circumstances well beyond Iran's control.
Remember, it was the US decision to disband the Iraqi military.
But again, Iran was at that time willing to negotiate with the US when that offer was rebuffed and Syria felt threatened.
Here you had two of Iraq's neighbours that had an incentive to support the insurgency.
And like I said, to its surprise, the US did not maintain a strong military presence in Iraq.
Okay, Syria again would eventually come undone, giving Iran the ability to project more influence not only into Iraq, into Syria, but.
Despite that, it wasn't.
People keep on saying that Iraq is dominated by Iran.
It's too simplistic to say that, number one, on some level.
Right. What did Iran also witness the revival of Najaf as a clerical institution?
And that perhaps presents almost a greater threat to the Islamic Republic,
at least to its legitimacy or its claim to being the sole leader of Shiite Islam.
That to this very day and this is the picture I took up in Najaf.
I just like that because it this not only has this institution come back to serve as kind of a rival to the Iranian networks and clone.
I just find it so funny that there's a sign for pizza right before you enter.
I guess that's the only reason I do that. You know what I said?
Iran also wasn't able to get that by Hezbollah in Iraq.
In fact, we have these are the various banners of a I don't know how to describe a constellation of Shia militias.
And a good number of them, you know, get Iranians support.
But this is also the other thing that despite the odds, what the Iraqis are buying was an Iranian U.S. proxy war.
And this is a bit more in recent history, is that one of its leaders of one of these militias and an Iranian general,
Kosmos Soleimani, was assassinated on Iraqi soil.
If you remember, in January 2020, what was the most widely Google search term?
How did World War three break out? Because remember, what was the anticipation that this assassination,
like an assassination in Sarajevo, might set up a conflict that might spiral out of control?
Okay. In other words, if we look at kind of the significance is somehow Iraq has both the U.S. and Iran in this proxy war.
Okay. Yeah. In other words, Iraq surviving despite the odds.
Iraq. Let's go back to prior to 2003, weathered the longest conventional war of the 20th century, the Iran-Iraq war, followed by one of the sharpest.
The 1991 Gulf War, then the 1991 uprisings that swept through 15 of its 18 provinces and then a decade of sanctions.
Then the 2003 war happened. So let's now kind of let me list what I've described.
Ever witnessed an occupation from 2003 to 2011, the collapse of its national military in 2003, and insurgency from 2003 to 2008.
A civil war from 2006 to 2008.
And then the terrorist statelet of ISIS from 2014 to 2019.
ISIS is more or less still in Iraq, primarily in the Diyala province.
Is it still conducts terrorist attacks in Iraq, witness the genocide against the Yazidi population,
ethnic cleansing of the Syrian Chaldeans, and I'll talk a bit later of the Mandaean population.
It survived an aborted bid for Kurdish independence in 2017.
It has endured and sustained protest movements, the constituents of which are Shia, by virtue of its geographic location.
And then Shia left behind protesting against the Shia lead,
a proxy war between the U.S. and Iran that more or less has I would say I would date back to 2003 and weathered a pandemic.
And you also have to understand the not just depend a COVID pandemic, but a sterling mental health pandemic,
where the numbers I hear range from 1 to 3 to 1 to 5 Iraqis with heart having mental health issues,
without the infrastructure to cope with this problem. And now having lost all of that, now I'm bringing in the climate.
You see, You see?
So despite the odds, I mean therefore mean if we took looking at the history of the Arab states system that has endured quite a lot of shocks,
this is what I was just trying to get you to appreciate it. And how many you know, how much doubt whether they're okay now before it.
I just finished with the climate strategy. Right. How did Iraq survive?
So this is my assessment.
It survived because the region, its neighbours, wanted Iraq to survive as a nation, albeit also an advantage of Iraq surviving,
albeit weaker than it was under Saddam Hussein, whether it be Iran, Kuwait, definitely Saudi Arabia, Jordan, definitely as well as Syria.
Syria lost this Baathist rival and Turkey to the extent where as long as the Kurds don't declare independence,
all were factors that kept Iraq in tact from the region.
Although the U.S. wanted it intact. Even with a 2017 vote, the U.S. was one of the most adamant opponents for such a unilateral move.
But also the Iraqis.
We tend to forget one of Iraq, in fact, Iraq's Shia population.
It's hard to talk about it as a quote unquote, political faction, but those who happened to be Shia were finally now in power.
They were, if you wanted, wanted the whole pie. And, of course, even there was a Kurdish incoherence that we have to admit kept Iraq intact.
But the Kurdish bid for independence, that if you talk the let's say on the political level, there was always talk of Kurdish independence.
And I teach Kurdish students every year in Prague and they all dream of independence,
but even they did not want independence under these circumstances.
The divide between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the KDP that you dominant parties is pronounced to this very day.
And this is what I mean by Kurdish ethnic coherence.
So what do we have that we do have a state that over 20 years has survived despite that moment when we
really thought there would be a coup when Nuri al-Maliki was threatening to mobilise units loyal to him.
After the chaos with ISIS from 2014 2015, the coup never materialised, even though there was an expectation of it.
And finally, a Shia civil war that was talked about last summer still has yet to and fortunately did not materialise.
So now kind of is the final conclusion. A good number of Iraq's problems were manmade outside of Iraq's borders.
I would say all, you know, consequences of primarily the U.S. invasion combined with poor governance within Iraq.
And I think that's also going to be the problem with climate change.
These are manmade problems. A good number are problems that are created beyond Iraq's borders.
But then local governance is also going to exacerbate matters.
So I'll just show you just kind of a couple of slides showing us the problem.
63.5 degrees in Baghdad. Celsius, that is.
What are the ramifications of temperatures like this? Now, when I'm showing you temperatures like this, you have to realise.
Remember where you were during the 2019 summer heat wave.
And it's easy to remember the last vacation you took without wearing a mask or having to worry about COVID vaccines.
Right. And if you remember how hot that was, Iraq and Kuwait, that area there witnessed the hottest temperatures.
And Earth says we were recording temperatures and the history of recording temperature as a climate.
How is this going to affect Iraq? It's going to have a variety of ramifications.
I just want to show you kind of from a gender perspective, I do argue that there's also there is a gender component here.
Women are going to be disproportionately affected,
because when I talk about gender in the Anthropocene, if we look at these beekeepers in Diyala, okay,
or let's say cattle herders or fish or people who do fishing in the marshes,
a good number of them are female head of households due to the wars with ISIS or the assassination of the head of households.
We don't realise that most of the heads of families in these particular areas are women, right?
Without water, you don't have the necessary flora and fauna for bees to pollinate.
Okay. It's the same problem in the marshes. Okay.
And again, if we look at just from a climate perspective, those oil fields I was talking about,
Iraq will be disproportionately affected in terms of not only climate change,
but then the toxic legacies not only of three wars, but the burning of hydrocarbons.
So you remember Basra as a home to a large Afro Iraqi population.
Now, look at this term I came up with climate Apartheid is not mine is the term developed by Desmond Tutu,
where in this particular case I looked at how a climate change effect,
let's say Basra's Afro Iraqi population compared to Columbia's African population,
or what I argue is climate change is going to be concurrent with poverty and therefore the way it's going to be experienced is quite different.
And then here we get to kind of Iraq and our imagination and the global imagination, the site of the Garden of Eden.
And here, if you look at this particular community, the Mandaeans are facing few threats.
Not only were they threatened by various militias who were displacing them from the south of Iraq, but this is a kind of an interesting faith,
a community that claims a kind of neo gnostic faith where they revered John the Baptist and thus baptism is integral to their faith.
But they're just like the Yazidis. The Mandaeans are a community whose faith is strictly and solely connected to the land where they come from.
Okay. And this is what I mean by the loss of Iraq's heterogeneity with the Yazidis.
It was as a result of ISIS.
In the case of the Mandaeans, it's the combination of, let's look around, hotter temperatures are leading to more evaporation.
The damming of the rivers in Turkey are leading to less flow of water coming down.
And then last night, remember, forget the act of political ecology committed under Saddam Hussein, the draining of the marshes.
The marshes were restored, but in that intervening time, there was irreparable damage that had started to cause more intense sandstorms.
Just so I can show you, this is a picture of Basra. And if you can't see it exactly.
Oh, this I'll show you this just to kind of reflect on my own personal trip.
This is a sandstorm in Columbia. It's 3 p.m. and this is what we're seeing because Dubai, Kuwait, the foliage experiences sandstorm.
When I say in Iraq is something that is quite unusual even for my mom and father.
They have never witnessed this kind of intensity. So that's the shrine of call home here.
And then this is not rain. They're just particles of hard sand droplets.
Just to show you and then literally a minute later, it's all clear.
And that's what I'm saying, it's literally 3 p.m.
But these are kind of anomalous sandstorms where now it's even providing kind of a health hazard in terms of people
now being hospitalised because the intensity and frequency is a lot more so as to conclude Now I mean to make,
you know, Iraq in terms of kind of the story we've told of civilisation and environmental story,
I believe from them that our mesto has these problems with civilisation.
For him it's, it's kind of, it's a subjective term, but let's just go with it.
Okay. Iraq is of course, considered in the story of modern civilisation,
the birthplace of not only civilisation, but the site of many of the good parts of the Bible itself.
And yes, what what are we witnessing in Iraq?
If civilisation began here and set us on a trajectory to modern civilisation?
Now, this is the question then will there also be in Iraq where modern civilisation first begins to unravel due to these kind of fluctuations?
These. Other things to think about now. I don't want to end on such a pessimistic note.
Right. Remember Johnson, Melissa, who was kidnapped in February, he was eventually released.
We don't know. Still, he hasn't told us who kidnapped him or how he was released.
There is no cause for optimism. And it's finally this.
And it relates to where I'm giving my presentation.
Back in the 1930s, and the Iraqi politician named Mohammed Hadebe had a vision of a bi national Iraq and Iraq, where the Kurds were given autonomy,
but also a stake in the system, a state where Iraq's Sunnis and Shias could cooperate in the name of modernisation and development.
Right. That was Mohammed Hadid's vision in the 1930.
And for all of you who don't know it, we have the legacy of his daughters work in this building that she designed right here.
And so this is where I conclude for some notes of optimism.
The last 20 years have been difficult,
but we also have to acknowledge that this is also an opportunity to for Mohammed Hadi's vision is manifesting itself.
And on that kind of note, there is some room for optimism in the next 20 years.
Thank you so much. Oh, and just some further reading if you want.
I wrote this for International Women's Day on Wednesday.
This article talking about the problem of honour killings in Iraq deserves its own lecture.
I didn't do it justice. And then finally, if you want to know more about the environment, a excellent lecture on the Middle East Centre,
a series of podcasts which I believe you check with this political ecology.
Tell us about the environment. Yeah, this was also if you want to learn about Iraq's environmental problems by a proper political ecologist,
and yes, if you want to keep in touch or if we have questions in the future that weren't articulated during the Q&A.
Thank you.